Week 5: Fai

With help of Femi I observed the first robotic prostatectomy in this week. I shadowed Femi’s mentor – Dr. Tewari who is an internationally acclaimed expert on Robotic Prostatectomy and other minimally invasive robotic surgeries. Dr. Tewari used the da Vinci surgical system to perform prostatectomy. He sat at a console in the corner of the room and remotely controlled the robotic arms while I was viewing the surgery via a real-time 3D monitor--I had to wear polarized glasses to see it 3D. The prostate was excised, inked and sliced to be a small specimen. The specimen then proceeded to the multiphoton microscopy core facility for observation. I watched how to use multiphoton microscope and I found several advantages of multiphoton microscope over confocal microscopy including its deeper tissue penetration, efficient light detection and reduced phototoxicity.

In addition, I had a chance to see Trans-Esophageal Echocardiogram (TEE) and Cardiac Catheterization with help of Laura. TEE is a sonogram of the heart. It uses standard ultrasound techniques to image two-dimensional slices of the heart. A specialized probe containing an ultrasound transducer at its tip is passed into the patient's esophagus. This allows image and Doppler evaluation which can be recorded. The difficult part of TEE is to put down the probe through patient’s throat. There are several steps before the probe reaching the aimed site, including gargling and spraying anesthetics, coughing and swallowing. Laura told me that in some cases patients felt pain and do not be able to swallow the probe. That led to the cancelation of TEE. However, the case I saw that day went very well. Concerning cardiac cath, Dr. Bergman inserted a catheter into brachial artery and snaked the catheter until reaching coronary artery. It surprised me that doctor can snake a catheter via such a very small and very long blood vessel. After the catheter reach coronary artery, contrast dye is injected to see areas of constriction. It turned out that most of the patient’s coronary artery was occluded. For this case bypass surgery would be the best and only way to treat the patient.

I also went with Bo to Department of radiology at 55th stress to get MRI scan. Bo was doing his clinical research project—writing one chapter of a book about how to operate s MRI scanner for people who have never used it and he needed some volunteers to get brain scan. IMR is safe and it is very expensive procedure. I think it would be great to try it once for fun and to check up my brain (for free). As expected I am (still) normal :)